


I Celebrate Myself, And Sing Myself

by mintpearlvoice



Category: American Horror Story, Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/F, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-03
Updated: 2014-05-03
Packaged: 2018-01-21 19:28:22
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 816
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1561424
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mintpearlvoice/pseuds/mintpearlvoice
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lana Winters has always considered Fredricka her finest pupil.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Celebrate Myself, And Sing Myself

"I'm sorry, Freddie," Will says, his voice as gentle as if he's trying to calm a frightened dog, "but if we want this to work, we're going to have to make it look real."  
She doesn't wish she's been a better person or anything. Freddie Lounds has long ago learned that life is more fun when lived entirely without regrets. Instead she thinks of Lana Winters, her journalism professor, who encountered a serial killer while volunteering herself for undercover repair-your-lesbians therapy and lived to tell the tale. Ever since reading Briarcliff Exposed and Maniac, she's lived by one rule: make her proud.  
"Do it," she says, and closes her eyes. Then, opening them again: "No, don't take the arm, take the leg. I can live without both legs if you want- but my words per minute rate is untouchable."  
He positions the saw right below her knee, and she muffles a scream.

Three months later, Freddie turns up to her own book signing wearing one snakeskin heel and one prothestetic leg. Halfway through her reading, a woman walks through the door- dark glasses, low-brimmed black hat, a pencil skirt that you wouldn't expect a woman of forty to be able to pull off.  
Freddie loses her place and has to go back over the page again.

They meet for drinks afterwards.  
"I'd say I found your methods somewhat unorthodox, but you'd call me a terrible hypocrite. I'll merely point out that there's a difference between accidentally allying oneself with a serial killer and seeking one out."  
"I'll drop the topic entirely and propose a toast, then- to going where we aren't wanted."  
"Amen, Lounds," Lana Winters says, and raises her glass. "But the next time, tell someone where you're going before you leave. It might help."

When she's hunting the Red Dragon, she takes her erstwhile professor's advice. Emergency services don’t manage to catch him, but they are just barely in time to stop her from burning alive. She loses the other leg this time- and her pretty red curls. Her face, thankfully, is unscarred, and her hands will heal.  
I am not as brave as Lana, Freddie thinks as she watches bad talk shows from the hospital bed where she lays in her full-body cast, not really paying attention to any of them. Just more reckless. Lana would have been able to outsmart him and escape, get his motive, get his identity. All I got out of that was the fact that I am a coward. I begged for my life.

People come and ask her questions, but for weeks on end all she can say is "Fuck you, Will Graham." When Wendy comes to visit her, strokes what's left of her hair and says "I love you," she tries to make Fuck You Will Graham sound like "I love you too."  
It doesn't work. Wendy stops visiting. 

The hospital wants to release her to her family, but there isn't a Lounds family, not really. Just a few aunts and uncles down south who feared her sexuality as much as her poison pen and cut her off.  
But "I would call myself, without reservations, the closest thing to a friend that Miss Lounds would admit to having."  
"And why is that?" Alana Bloom asks, pen poised over legal pad.  
A smile flutters around the edges of Lana's lips. "We know all each other's secrets."  
"I wasn't aware that Miss Lounds had secrets. She seems like such a… public person."  
"Oh, everyone has secrets. It's just a question of what one might have to do to get to them."

You are exactly like me. We are the untouchables of the literary world. We tell the public what they want to know.

Freddie goes home with Lana Winters. She reads old lesbian pulp fiction paperbacks and doesn't shove the cats away when they curl up on her lap and drinks sweet iced tea.  
One day she opens her mouth and says: "I want to write."

Lana coaches Freddie in the art of the perfect graceful lie. With the Red Dragon dead, no one will ever know that Freddie Lounds, just once, broke down and cried. She uses the proceeds of her book (in which she was clever and brave and a good role model for scared young girls) to buy a house in Hollywood big enough for them both. They get a new black cat and name her Nellie, after Nellie Bly. Freddie hosts queer-themed literature symposiums. She's not sure enough of her raw new body to start dating again, but she sets Lana up on one blind date a week. You can't burn a phoenix. That's the thing about Freddie Lounds. Newspapers burn, but secrets don't, and she is absolutely filled with them. Hollywood is a good place for a reporter. One scandal a week, at least. Her bank account has never had it so good.


End file.
